Getting Lost In The Con
by Many A Mistake
Summary: Fontaine had never fought with himself before. But he had also never had a genetically modified murder child on its way to kill him nor had he ever shot up with ADAM before. Today would be a day of firsts. (Carried over from Ao3)
1. Chapter 1

_Fontaine had never fought with himself before. But he had also never had a genetically modified murder child on its way to kill him nor had he ever shot up with ADAM before._

 _Today would be a day of firsts._

…

…

He'd lost sight of the kid for no more than five seconds and he'd _vanished_.

Not in the dead in a ditch fashion he'd intended either, more along the lines of up and made tracks sort of vanished.

Jack, his little genetic freak of nature, _missing_.

There was something about this that reminded Fontaine of a shark. He'd always attested that it was the shark you could not see that was the one that'd take the killing bite out of your hide, rather than the one you could keep your sights on. They came at you from the bottom you see. Torpedoing out of the murky depths, clearing the distance between you and it before you even have the chance to register your final moments. before it ends. The fin in the water was a red herring.

Not all that unlike, oh lets say, the only voice in all of hell happening to be a trustworthy, home-grown Irish accent for example?

But no matter how messy the end, all that splashing and screaming as the water turned red, Fontaine had never had difficulty with sharks before. This would be something of a first for him, a mistake made perhaps out of all this time spent being invisible. Things became alarmingly easy once he took the reigns of the revolutionary, dulled what had once been a skill set sharper than any knife.

New skills were traded for his old ones, this whole Atlas business carried with it a different act to the last. Moving people was still how the business was done but as the war went on and the people became less, Atlas's hands got dirtier. It was mostly avoided where he could help it, after all what was the purpose of being a conman if he was forced to do the heavy lifting himself? Eighty percent of a good con was getting others to do everything for him and leave with the best of the deal. But Rapture had been different, more so than he initially realised and now he sat here with the cost of his carelessness.

Maybe, just _maybe_ , it had been his fault.

But after having been good ol' Atlas for so bleeding long shrugging off that front had been like a breath of fresh air he hadn't known he needed. Fresh air was already hard enough to come by in Rapture. He'd only meant to enjoy himself a little, soaking in his victory that had been a long time coming and there'd been no one else around to enjoy it with – so his little genetic freak had been just the ticket.

A man couldn't get so much as a single moment of indulgence down here no more could he? Unbelievable.

Besides he'd done little more than impart a little wisdom onto the kid. A few truths after nothing but lies. Granted he might have taken to the task of enlighten their little Jack with just a little too much vigour, but who could fault him for that? If there'd ever been a time for celebration this had been it, so yeah. Maybe he had been a touch overzealous with his words – so sue him.

But to his honest to god credit – the kid was supposed to be dead a few minutes after anyway. Not like he would be carrying the emotional scars for long, so why not have a bit of a laugh?

Perhaps because Jack was _not_ in fact dead. He'd just stumbled into his first taste of reality and then he was gone. Likely with Fontaine's name still freshly branded into his head.

Shit.

Fontaine had a mountain of things he wanted to do once the genetic key was his. A laundry list of things to get through before he could even look at expanding to the surface, and he couldn't even start on the first fucking dot point because his little science experiment had up and houdini'd on him.

Snarling viciously under his breath, Fontaine raked his gaze over the monitors again. He'd watched Jack from the moment the boy had come stumbling out, still bleary eyed, from that bathysphere. Got him from point A to Z more efficiently than anyone could have asked for – they would not dwell on that little blackout on Cohen's playhouse, that was not _his_ fault – but now? Now that the master of Rapture needed to find him most, there wasn't so much as a glimpse of that offensively unattractive sweater. He wished the kid had not come back to Rapture still wearing that grotesque thing, no matter how neatly blood seeped into its weave.

And if he could not see him anywhere in Rapture now that all eyes belonged to him – there were only two places he could be. The first was somewhere around the old prison that Sinclair fellow ran. But that place had been cut off to the rest of Rapture for long enough that it could have been ADAM free and functioning all on its lonesome and they wouldn't have the foggiest. Jack was not likely to have found his way there.

Which meant he was in mother goose's roost.

"Fuck!" Fontaine cursed, slamming his fist down onto the desk that had borne more than its fair share of his outbursts throughout its life. Today, its age began to show as it groaned and creaked, threatening to give way if Frank dared strike it like that again. "That little shit stain wants to screw me out of my decade long investment in this place? Let's see if he makes it five fucking feet before I take him apart."

His temper was getting the best of him and Fontaine goddamn let it. Hadn't been able to express proper anger since falling into that little Irish bit. Couldn't be flying off the handle when there were people looking at him all starry eyed, expecting a saviour.

But it was just him now.

Alone, until the brat showed back up. Because he _would_.

Fontaine did not doubt this for a moment. The kid would turn back up on his doorstep before long. Couldn't even fault him for that, were their positions reversed Frank would be out for blood as well.

This was hardly the first time a disgruntled 'business partner' came looking for him. But it would be the first instance of that former colleague packing a punch that could down a big daddy on a good day, two men on a bad. A kid that couldn't die so long as there was a vita-chamber nearby. A kid that _he_ had made to withstand a barrage of bullets.

Yeah, this would be something of a first.

Briefly Fontaine's gaze flicked back up to the monitors. Looking even though he did not expect Jack to sudden materialize out of thin air, he'd given it a number of hours already. But he could see everything else, all those lunatics sniffing around looking for his lost kid.

The splicers were…interesting to manage. Different to how he had once to controlled them – lording ADAM over their heads like some junkies chasing after that powder. Now there was very little in the way of bargaining with them. He already had all the ADAM but Ryan had left him with those pheromones to lead those half-rabid morons. It was by no means a finely tuned way of moving masses, but it sure as hell was effective. They hardly even knew what they were doing – but they were still combing the place for Jack.

And still they hadn't found him. The entirety of Rapture looking and the hole that Tenenbaum kept was still out of sight. He'd be impressed if he were not so extraordinarily pissed. He supposed that the freaky German broad probably felt the same protective instinct for Jack as she did those little monsters. Likely would have caused him problems had she had a sudden development of conscience before they put him in the pod that took him topside.

Maternal fucking instinct – it'd brought him nothing but grief.

Grimly Fontaine's gaze dropped to the abused desk. Most of it was little more than evidence of his extended stay in the same location. Abandoned cigars, a cluster of empty bottles and too many loose scraps of paper to keep track of. His plans and documents were mostly internalised, but when he did need to keep it all noted down there used to be a better system than this. Neat, tidy, hidden. But with Jack needing his constant surveillance through Rapture he hadn't had the time and it was unlikely it really mattered now. No one left to really hunt down his few remaining secrets.

But amongst the papers there were a few pictures he should have scrapped long ago. The machine that had been rigged up before things really went to hell was supposed to funnel all the ADAM in Rapture at will. It was supposed to be for him. Suchong seemed to think they'd be able to make that top of the line plasmid that Fontaine requested for himself. Something without the nasty side effects. In fact he'd already supplied Fontaine with those plasmids – he only needed to crack them open and take them for a test run.

Fontaine didn't so much as look at the safe they were stored in.

"Focus Frankie." He hissed under his breath, rubbing his tired eyes harshly. Damn near pressing them into his sockets in an attempt to just stop them from aching. " _Focus_. Don't be letting the con slip away from you. Keep away from the stuff..."

He was no angel, he'd had his fair share of the good stuff topside and what he could afford while in Rapture. But with an investment like this he'd been forced to clean up a little bit more than he would have liked. The booze he could keep, an excuse to lock himself up with the whisky readily supplied in Atlas's lilt, but the stronger stuff had to be put on the back burner. Shooting up with plasmids sure as shit was off the table. In the early days, he'd seen it destroy people quick enough. But Suchong had been adamant that what he'd cooked up for his employer of the time would have no lasting ill effects.

Probably best not to trust the chink.

He wouldn't touch it. The safe remained locked and Fontaine's eyes stayed on the screens.

And finally, _finally_ , as though he'd never left at all in the first place – the kid came crawling out of the woodworks.

It was such an overwhelming relief when he finally caught sight of the exhausted kid dragging himself out of some hole in the wall. Looked like a million bucks, still wearing that ugly sweater and covered in blood and bruises the kid was back on his radar. He'd clearly rested, but it might have done more harm than good – supplying his body with a false sense of security when he wasn't out of the mousetrap yet. Bloody kid didn't have his brains after all. No one could afford a brief reprieve in Rapture.

But Fontaine was more than happy to supply it with a more permanent reprieve.

"And now you've got hooked up with Tenenbaum, huh, kid? She's a regular Mother Goose."

Jack jumped upon hearing his true accent coming filtering through the radio at his hip. Never did that when it was good ol' Atlas on the other end. But he listened all the same and that was all that really mattered.

As Fontaine spoke to Jack it felt suspiciously like he was doing little more than pulling the pin on a brat's tantrum. Ruining the fun before Jack got the chance to really get going. Well one of them had to be the adult here didn't they? "All right, fun's fun, kid, but now... go get stepped on by a big daddy, Would you kindly?"

Admittedly his particular choice of phrasing might have come from a place of anger. Exhausted and frustrated after having waited on the damn brat to show back up again. He thought it perfectly reasonable that he was compensated for his troubles with a bit of entertainment if nothing else.

Except Jack wasn't being very entertaining. In fact, he wasn't doing much of anything.

"Huh?" And shit if the disbelief in his voice was not the most honesty he'd ever bestowed onto the kid.

Grabbing for his radio again, Fontaine's fingers turned white around the sturdy device. Some useless part of his brain mused that it was just as well it was, because he would have crushed it in that moment were it not practically a brick. "I _says_ ," He repeated slowly, as though that might somehow get it through Jacks thick skull. "Would you _kindly_ go get _stepped_ on by a Big Daddy!"

A cold dread began settling into the pit of Fontaine's stomach as he watched. Jack, wound up tight as a spring just waiting to snap back into place, waited as well. The seconds trickled on by and then very, very slowly Jack began to turn his hands over. Checking himself, flexing his fingers and finally cracking a smile.

But he went nowhere.

Understanding joined the icy stone in Frank's stomach. Not that it showed much in his words – he didn't get where he was by having a weak front. "Ah. Seems like Mother Goose has been playing around in your egg salad." That _bitch_ , fucking around with his things. But fine, if that didn't fly no more – he had the squint work on a few others that even the German bitch didn't know about. "If you won't dance to that tune, I got others. ' _Code Yellow_.'"

Now there was just something about the way the kid dropped, how he abruptly went from grinning at his new found sense of freedom to being hunched over wheezing on his own air, as though someone had just punched it straight out of his gut. That really took the wind out of Fontaine's sails for a moment.

He'd been more than happy to watch him wander off and get himself skewered on the end of a big daddy's drill – but watching Jack slowly decay was a rather different kind of satisfaction. One that came with just a hint of bitterness once the initial vindictive satisfaction ebbed away. Slow deaths were a hassle, it meant he had more time to cool off and just…observe.

If Jack had just been a good boy it would be well and truly over before that bitterness could have set in.

But it had not set in just yet.

"I just told your brain to tell your heart to stop beating." He explained, smirking as Jack doubled over, pulling at his chest as though he might somehow be able to physically undo what his master had just done. His futile and frantic attempts did little more than feed Fontaine's gloating. "Not right off the bat, mind you. The heart's a stubborn muscle. But it ain't that stubborn."

There was the bitterness. He went quiet for a time, although his gaze never strayed far from Jack now that he had him back in his sight again. After the initial burst of giddy satisfaction that came with one upping the freaky scientist and her meddling, the coldness returned.

Because his kid was persistent as hell and even as he struggled back onto his own two feet, suffering the effects of the shutdown sequence his body had moved into, he kept on going.

Stubborn little shit didn't know when to just roll over and die.

He must have gotten that one from his old man.

Even more concerning was the fact he was still making considerable progress. He'd become something of the resident expert in splicer termination and it showed as he slugged it through the hordes that had been just waiting for their chance to go at him once he entered Olympus Heights, looking for something.

His answer came over the radio with the bitch's accented words. Oh for fuck's sake – the kid was looking for a cure to his control? Wasn't stripping him of his favourite three little words enough?

In that moment Fontaine resolved to take his time with that German twist when all was said and done, a bullet not nearly satisfying enough. He thought he'd cut her some slack at first – after all that little sea slug had been her gift to him way back when. Got them to where they were today. Would 'have been in poor form to not give such a profitable business partner a quick death.

Hell, he'd been willing to do just the same for Jack but both he and Tenenbaum had not taken his kindness and instead continued to fucking breathe.

"Should 'ave just kept that German twist at a good arm's length." Fontaine groused under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache began to set in. He had not wanted to spend his victory lap fucking dealing with this shit.

Yet when he saw the first of those leaden-headed morons giving Jack a rough time, pouncing on him not long after a messy encounter with a big daddy, for what seemed like the first time since he stumbled into the use of plasmids, Fontaine almost felt merciful enough to be sincere with the kid. Almost.

And of course, he could not forgo a perfect opportunity to speak up. "That's it, kid." He purred across the radio thinking that it would only be fitting that Jack heard his voice last. Hell, he even packed on a bit of sugar in his words; comfort the little idiot through the process of walking up the pearly gates as it were. "You're busto. My new friends will catch up with you soon. Ah, kid ... I hope they make it quick."

He truly meant that. The quicker this was over, the sooner he could step off that edge he'd been on since Jack first vanished.

But of course, he had not paid for subpar goods when ordering Jack up, and so he should not have been surprised when the little bastard managed to pull through, clinging to a first aid dispenser like it was his god damn light and saviour.

Un-fucking-believable.

That headache was becoming more prevalent now.

Pushing away from his little workstation Fontaine went in search of another drink. Where the hell was that whisky? He knew it must be around the place somewhere; he'd been saving it. Not quite with celebratory purposes in mind, but certainly not as a way to kill an oncoming aneurism.

He found the dusty bottle carefully tucked away under his bed. Sitting back on his haunches Fontaine rubbed the bottle clean, scrutinizing the label without really caring or needing to refresh his memory on its brand.

It had travelled with him from topside to the dingy little office he'd initially set up in the fisheries. A few times he'd almost broken it out, usually in better spirits than he was now, but always he'd put it away again. Saving it for imaginary scenario where it would be better suited to drink.

They'd had plenty of booze to down after all, and this whisky had once upon a time been someone else's – a gift if he recalled correctly. Stealing was no great concern for him, but he'd simply had no need to take this when there were plenty of other bottles available to him and far less troublesome to have.

However, the dead did not need the high like the living did. And by god did he need it now.

Breaking the bottle open Fontaine hesitated on returning to the desk. Even from there he could make out Jack's figure, having become rather good at spotting him among Rapture's wreckage after so long keeping an eye on him. Sure enough he was doing just fine, fucking peachy. Disgruntled, Frank did not go back to watching Jack step on every single one of his nerves and instead sat on the ground, back against his bed with the bottle in hand.

It was important, he reflected, to remember where he could drop the act. Safe and alone, a place fitting those characteristics had not existed anywhere in Rapture for two years now. But since there was no more Atlas act and so now he was free to be Fontaine away from prying eyes. Free to sit here on the floor of his own roost and take a massive swig from the lukewarm bottle.

Immediately Frank cringed, coughing violently. He had not expected the taste he got. "Oh fuck, what the hell?" He gagged, checking the bottle again for any indication that it might have been stored incorrectly or traded out for some kind of poison.

Sure enough, he found the label that he knew so well to be flaking slightly and when he peeled it back was rewarded with the most obvious thing in the world.

"Should 'ave fucking known." Frank chuckled dryly, still recovering from the shock of essentially drinking nothing besides straight alcohol when he'd expected something a little less breath stopping. "Lunatic…" He muttered, dropping the bottle down between his legs to stare up at the ceiling, idly counting the cracks he could see as he waited for the world to stop spinning.

He was no lightweight but there were a special few that could always outclass him in the insane lengths they'd go to for a strong drink – this just so happened to be one of those times. Likely it didn't help that most of the booze in Rapture was more water than alcohol towards the end. There was a reason he'd kept his own damn stash back in the day.

Those days felt like a lifetime ago. In fact, they _were_ from a lifetime ago.

Before Jack and Adam, even Ryan and his fucking undersea utopia. Before Atlas was even an abstract idea conjured up from a haphazard sighting of a poster. The life he'd been leading before the most intensive lie of his life began. Back when the only lie he still had to keep track of was Fontaine.

Might as well have been fifteen lives ago belonging to a different man for as distant a memory as it was. "Must be all those nights without sleep." He reasoned to himself. "To be getting so fucking nostalgic."

That might have been the other reason he'd never reached for this bottle before.

Tiredly his gaze drifted back down to the monitors and sure enough Jack was still at it. Irritated by the boy's insistence on living, Fontaine finally heaved himself back to his feet and returned to the desk. Purposefully not looking at the safe in the corner that seemed to be screaming at him, he set himself back down. He'd brought the bottle with him.

"I don't like this anymore than you do, kid." He began slowly, another little shred of sincerity buried under all of that crippling anger. "But you gotta understand where I'm coming from." Fontaine continued easily, none of his exhaustion coming through in the low drawl. He was better an actor than that. "I've got twelve years down here. Big investment." He was not _explaining_ himself to Jack, Fontaine didn't fucking need to explain himself. He was just… This was just _fact_.

"A man can't walk away from a long con like that."

He couldn't. He _wouldn't_.

For the first time since this all really started, Fontaine hated how quiet his kid was as he looked into the blinking eye of a security camera. Staring through it as if he could somehow see the man on the other side. Jack's silence felt like condemnation.


	2. Chapter 2

Once upon a time Ryan had remarked on Jack's uncanny ability to overcome the traditional methods of separating a man from his soul.

At the time Fontaine had a good laugh at the old bastard's expense, but now he was on the other side of that particular obstacle and it was markedly less amusing.

The headache he'd hoped to chase away with what he'd expected to be slightly less potent alcohol was about as persistent as Jack was. All this watered down booze from Rapture must have made him weak to the real good stuff because Fontaine could feel himself slipping into the bottle bit by bit.

Not that it came through in how he spoke to Jack.

Taunts, jeers, a slew of unfriendly advice to contrast his once so _helpful_ nature. All of it was delivered smoothly, viciously, not a hint of his increasingly inebriated state to be heard.

Although he might not have been as damned clever as he certainly thought he was, because reviewing the things he'd let slip out his mouth Fontaine observed an unsettling trend.

For every cruelty.

" _Won't make a difference when this whole place is fish food."_

" _You ever have a dog you gotta put down? Breaks your heart_."

There was an echoing weakness.

" _Kills me to turn my fist to you, but business is business. Don't let it get you down."_

" _Hate to see you this way, kid. Hell, I was there when you were born."_

" _No more grifts. No more scams."_

Not a single word came without some derision, the façade of regret as his every word positively oozed with mirth. To Jack it would be no different to the rest of his jeering, but to Frank the fact those words existed at all left a sour take in his mouth.

Once this trend was noticed anger slipped into the usually mocking drawl. "You think you're some kind of hero?" He'd snapped into the radio, further enraged by Jack's tightlipped attitude. "I ordered you up from Suchong like a Chinese dinner: a little from column A, a little from column B. What do you plan on going back to?" He demanded, pacing the small length of his little hole in the wall hide away.

Yet still Jack endured in his silence. He might as well have been putting answers in the kids mouth himself at this point.

"Your fake family? Your phony dreams?" He'd made that stupid bastard his family to begin with. Had the lies neatly tattooed on the inside of his head along with the chains on his wrists – a cruelty mirrored with a weakness even then.

He didn't _have_ to give him nice memories. That was just a kindness that hadn't cost him a nickel to give – and the fucking brat wasn't even grateful for it.

"Putting you out of your misery will be the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you!" Fontaine snapped, abruptly turning the radio off and tossing it aside, livid when he hadn't gotten so much as a retort out of the kid.

This silent treatment was incredibly frustrating. Anything would have done, an angry word or a tear – fucking anything would have done but the kid was so god damn _quiet_.

Why wouldn't he just talk to him? Even if it was to just tell him they weren't no fucking family, that he'd never be forgiven for what he'd done – anything was better than this endless silence.

This was getting out of hand, his temper flying just a little out of his control. He had to calm back down and approach the situation with a level head. Getting this worked up about the kid's lack of argument wasn't productive. "Must…must have 'ad more than I thought." Fontaine muttered, voice slurring just a bit now he was not addressing Jack anymore.

It was hardly his fault; Frank was no lightweight he just so happened to know near suicidal drinkers. Used to know. There was no one really left in Rapture to know anymore, and even on the slim chance a few old faces were still kicking around they were likely too spliced up to know their own damn name – let alone any of his. This leaky, sinking shithole was going to need a proper overhaul once the kid was dealt with – Fontaine had developed quite the distaste for those splicers, better to flush a majority of them out.

He'd keep a few around of course, someone to do the dirty work.

Fontaine was beginning to regret having been so hasty with his victory lap. Jack would have been much better suited for that dirty work but without his little mental trigger there was no way to make him do it now. Better to shut him down before he had a chance to ruin anything else.

Which was precisely what he seemed to be trying to do.

Hunting around for that lot 192 and even though Frank had successfully managed to keep the sample that Tenenbaum had taken for herself out of the kid's reach – there were others.

The first time the kid came across a vial of the stuff, Frank had taken another gulp of the whisky and did not retch as it burned on the way down this time.

By the second his control was broken and the kid had found it in _his_ penthouse no less.

Were he not currently five seconds away from stepping out of his own secure location just to try beating the kid to within and inch of his life with his own bare hands – Fontaine might have even found it amusing when Jack had recoiled from the bear at the top of his stairs. Always had freaked the kid out. Less amusing was the part where he set the fucking thing on fire – probably wanted to do that before he could even remember hating it.

"You broke the spell?!" He shouted through the coms, once again pacing back and forth furiously. He was fucking fuming and there was nowhere for all that pent up energy to go besides the radio. "But layin' all your chips on Mother Goose – it's not like you never been double-crossed before, you know what I'm sayin'?" It was nearly worth it to see how Jack cringed, the reaction strong enough to be easily picked up on those shoddy cameras.

He might cringe now but the boy had control back in his hands and now he was heading Fontaine's way. That unstoppable killing machine that had been his ace in the hole – on its way to kill him.

Well it was enough to make a man rethink a few things.

Like say the viability that the plasmid bottles in that little safe of his.

Turning from the screens Frank knelt before his safe, ignoring the thin layer of dust that had gathered. He'd done his damndest to not so much as step close enough to brush this thing for months. But he knew the code, still crisply printed in his memory and it swung open with little more than a squeak and groan.

Inside the bottles were still glowing.

The neat row of luminescent vials presented him with a unique set of plasmids. Some would be familiar to the masses, Inferno and Winter Blast among them, but a few would be all for him. He needed only pick out a selection and trust that he'd paid the chink enough to be a thorough bastard.

For the first time since flying into a rage, Fontaine slowed down.

Gingerly handling the bottles one at a time, turning them over and inspecting the substance inside. They were beautiful, in that so horrifying it made your skin crawl sorta way. The only sort of beautiful left in Rapture he supposed.

Made for exceptional bed lamps but the idea of pumping something that glowed was not exactly most people's first through upon seeing them.

In his hands the vitals almost seemed to thrum with energy. Realistically Fontaine knew this to be his imagination adding weight to the things in fingers but there was no need for imagination when it came to what they were capable of. To this day he could not forget his first time witnessing what ADAM could do to people. Splicers were not the worst of it, not by a fucking long shot.

Still he remembers something large, warped, reaching. Something that might have once been a person, that reeked and stretched across the floor and walls – sticking to them as it writhed and twisted. Still reaching for him.

Yeah, he was under no illusions about his own moral fiber. But he'd been the one that turned from that thing, gagging while Tenenbaum and Suchong casually made remark on their initial failures with ADAM. And now that same woman played the fucking saint as though she'd not been directly responsible for that thing that nearly cost him his lunch.

It was unproductive to recall memories of that particular nightmare while holding onto a plasmid but he could just not seem to shake the imagery. However logically he was able to convince himself that was a baseless concern – this here was the goods he paid for and given that Jack was just a little too good a product he was fairly certain that these would prove to be just as effective. Better controlled too he'd wager.

Frank was by no means squeamish and he certainly was not new to the pinch of a needle in his veins. Had to curb the recreational stuff for a few reasons in the past, tended to keep to the white powder before even that became a little too dicey when balancing so many fine cons.

But ADAM was a whole other ballgame and even he hesitated before shooting up.

The echo of his own warnings ringing between his ears. He'd been the one that once upon a time told his old bodyguard Reg not to touch the things regardless of how beefed up they would have made him. Not that ol' Reggie really needed the boost. Hadn't thought about that lug for months.

Unlike the kid he knew what to expect as the needle wedged itself under his flesh. He'd braced for it as best he could, having taken a seat on his cot as he injected the first of his plasmids. Fontaine knew each one was going to knock the shit out of him but he figured that the more, lets say aggressive, of the group would pack the biggest punch. Better to start with that so as not to lose his nerve towards the end.

In hindsight he should not have been at all surprised, he'd watched the kid light up like a Christmas tree after all. But when the first drop of the enhanced electro bolt entered his system, he screamed.

It shot straight through his body, no pun intended, like a he'd been struck by a crack of lightening. Spreading across every nerve setting him alight from the inside. It was horrifying but mesmerizing as the blue energy surged up his arms, tracing along his veins, racing to take up space the fastest and then it was crackling out from under his flesh. Dancing across his fingers, lighting up everything it could reach. He was going to explode from the inside.

With the last shred of coherency he could managed Fontaine tried to keep himself anchored in place, if he went moving around now he'd be liable to do some real damage to himself. Provided this plasmid did not burn him from the inside out first.

Despite his best attempts to stay exactly where he'd sat himself down, the violence of the plasmid setting itself into his body, reworking his DNA to its particular needs knocks him clean to the floor. He was writhing, twisting, damn near shattering as the stuff made fast work of what little semblance of humanity he might have had any claim to.

And when it was Jack that went through this, hadn't he been right there to assure him all was well? Hadn't he been there to talk the little shit through the whole thing?

There was no one there as he was surely dying, but his mind conjured up voices all the same for a split second beyond his howling Frank could have sworn he heard someone calling out his name.

Which name? There were so many he'd worn…even _Frank_ did not seem to belong to him.

But they were definitely calling his name and for that split second death didn't seem quite so bad. Not as cold or hard as he'd imagined it to be when he was still just that little runt curled in his orphanage bed. Then just like that he was gone; the world fizzled out around him and turned black.

Dying right there didn't seem so bad, so long as that imagined voice was really calling _his_ name.

But he did not die.

Unfortunate for everyone involved he supposed. Instead Frank returned to the world slowly, struggling to make sense of reality as it came inching back to him and blurry bursts of light or sound.

As he came around the first time he found a bit of static still occasionally racing across his fingers where they splayed out, pressing against the fallen whisky bottle, holding onto it as some kind of half-baked lifeline.

He only remained in the waking world for a few seconds at a time. Coming in and out steadily, sometimes long enough to see those monitors overhead and distantly acknowledge that his little monster was not yet close enough to try and kill him. But still making steady progress. Still slugging through. Frank might have laughed at that, hard to tell as he faded back out.

During the brief moments of semi-consciousness he hallucinated.

Sometimes that imagined voice would make a return. Most often it was sharp, biting as some long lost argument stirred in his memory. Other times it was soft lyrical and usually he'd fall back under more quickly when met with that tone. Sometimes they came in pairs, young and old – human for the most part, but on occasion – a little sister.

Those little monsters were unsettling on a good day but to be imagining the glowy eyed freaks while sprawled defenselessly on the floor, it was enough to shock Frank back into reality for a few moments at a time.

And finally it all came back to him. No more fading out.

Groaning Frank heaved his heavy body up off the floor, feeling about ten years older since he'd dropped. Hopefully this feeling would diminish the longer he was back in his own head.

Blearily he glanced around and found to his relief that everything was just as he left it, no splicers had found their way in and neither had the kid.

A quick check of the screens and he saw Jack wasn't likely to find him for a fair while yet anyways, still stuck wasting his time with big daddies. Making some colossal last-ditch effort to save every single one of those little monsters now he had the time to do so.

Where the kid had picked up a sense of humanity was beyond Frank.

He sure as shit hadn't gotten it from himself, Ryan or the doctors that built him. So where had he learned a trick like that? Wasn't in his blood, wasn't in his nurturing – he just…was.

Deciding that now, as his head was working on splitting itself in two, was not the time to be thinking about that philosophical discussion Frank let the thought drop away and instead focused on righting himself instead. "First one is a bitch." He hissed under his breath and in the back of his mind an old turn of phrase resurfaced unbidden.

 _First time Plasmid's a real kick from a mule. But…_

"Aint nothing like a fist full of lightening." He echoed, cutting over the accented memory as his fingers came crackling into life as he willed it. Yeah, okay that was something sweet.

He could see how the junkies got drunk on the power of it. He'd been known to over indulge and power had always been a pretty enticing motivation for him, so this was right up his ally.

But Fontaine was still cautious, taking the time to check himself for any immediate side effects. He'd seen users of ADAM mutate before they even shot their first bolt of lightening, lesions on their face and arms usually came first and so he checked those areas immediately.

However everything seemed to have stayed just the way it ought to. A little work-worn and a little scarred but still one hundred percent himself. As much as a man like himself could be considered authentic in any sense of the word. Perhaps not ' _himself'_ but certainly no splicer.

Good, because he was not anywhere near close to done yet.

The first shot was rattling, he'd expected that going in, and he knew the rest wouldn't be exactly pleasant either but he had to get through them. With that walking armory heading his way he'd be in need of them all.

So he was reaching for the second bottle before the first had even truly settled in. Possibly getting a little too enthusiastic now that he could feel the lightening thrumming through his body.

Next would be the ice and then the fire, then he'd turn his attention to a few more exclusive products.

Winter blast he found to be horribly disagreeable. Not a sharp explosion as electro bolt had been but no less unpleasant. It seeped into him slowly. Inching deeper and deeper into his bones, settling there as the skin of his arms turned blue and then black right before his eyes. Numbing in seconds. Could have driven a nail right through him, flesh muscle bone and all, he wouldn't have felt so much as a twinge of pain.

Like the first time he was a little panicked by this but this time he stayed right where he was, waiting the transition out with minimal vocal complaints. He'd opted not to get off the ground this time, thinking it safer to not risk falling again. Just as well because he froze half of the floor in the time it took for the plasmid to adapt itself to his person.

Gradually the cold pulled itself back under his skin, leaving little crystals of ice along his arm and a faint blue tinge to his flesh. But he was free to move again, twitching his fingers to test for mobility. Which was tahnfkully unimpeded by the icy shell that cracked and reformed as he moved. Fontaine then found that while the numbness had not faded in its entirety, he could feel register pressure when he pulled the pads of his thumbs into the weak flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Not pain, just the recognition that he was being touched by something.

He'd barely waited for feeling to return to his fingers before scooping up the last major plasmid. Fire he found – _definitely_ agreed with him.

It was clever of him to leave this till last he decided, having gotten better handling the experience with the first two. Had he gone for this first he might have just burnt down the whole place once his palms lit up. He'd decided to try and keep the transition controlled, let it smolder low as his skin broke open revealing smoky pots of ember where there ought to have been flesh inside.

But try as he might, Fontaine had never quite shrugged off that showman's streak.

The moment he had enough control for it Frank called up a large burst of flames, letting out a bark of laughter as the entire room lit up with the light from the fire. Already he could see the difference, he had a far greater intensity behind the flames he could conjure up.

Packing it tighter and tighter till it was a neatly shaped ball of heat, even as his invulnerable skin held it steady he could feel things around him beginning to smolder. The hotter it became, the brighter the flame, the more the red colour leeched away turning blue at its center and suddenly he was overcome with the urge to just _throw_ it. Anywhere at all, even better if he could send the little sun he held straight through a splicer's chest.

Rationality won out in the end and Fontaine forced himself to curb the swell of destructive desire enough to not accidentally set the whole place ablaze no matter how much he might want to take these new toys out for a spin.

But _oh shit_ …this was the stuff.

Forcing the ball to unravel slowly, making sure he did not accidentally spread ambers everywhere, Fontaine tucked the new abilities away and was once again faced with his own perfectly human arms. Not a mutation in sight, and all that power still burning way under his skin.

This was _incredible_.

Grinning to himself Fontaine clambered back to his feet with a newfound enthusiasm.

Let Jack crawl his way through Rapture to him, let him drag himself all the way through hell just to be met with him at the end. Let him fucking die under the weight of his disappointment when he realised he was outmaneuvered, _again_.

Except as his hand found its way back to the radio Fontaine's world momentarily tipped sideways. The floor came out from under him as though everything had rolled right off its axis and for a second time he was on the ground. He'd thought he was done with that, thought he'd given himself ample time to adjust but perhaps the ADAM was still crossing up his wires, figuring out how to settle into its newest host.

This time he did not recover nor did he black out. Instead left there, head still reeling from the sudden onslaught of vertigo. Even now as he lay stationary on the floor, the world continued to tip in and out of view, twisting in itself sickeningly. The legs of his desk curling inwards and out of his sight as the monitors overhead stretched wider and wider, becoming large walls of static in his eyes.

He'd had some bad trips in his time; this might just be making the list of the notable ones. At least that's what Frank thought until among all the warping something solid came into view.

A set of familiar, grim covered boots. His own he was fairly sure, but he knew for a fact he was still wearing them.

Someone else was standing there in front of the desk and the screens, figure blacked out against the flash of the monitors. For just a moment the person seemed to regard him, usually such a pause meant a bullet would not be long behind but rather than shoot Fontaine while he was down the other man turned his back on the fallen man. Hunching they placed both hands on the desk, making it solid once connecting with it.

Despite the roar of static in his ears and the nauseating twist of the world around him, Fontaine still clearly heard what the man had to say. "What the bleeding hell is he doing out there…?" He knew that voice and for a moment Fontaine was unable to make sense of hearing it again simply because _he_ was not currently speaking.

"Hold out a bit longer, boyo." The familiar voice continued to utter as the man ratted around the desk, seeking out something besides the radio.

The accented voice getting fuzzier the further away Fontaine drifted into unconsciousness, but still he heard those final, ominous parting words.

"Just…going to set a few things straight."

As far as bad trips went, this would be the worst he decided.


	3. Chapter 3

Now Fontaine had woken up in some right fucked positions – but this had to be one for the books.

Groggily he pulled himself back out of the murky depths of unconsciousness. Left rather exhausted with the number of blackouts he'd had to experience in such a short amount of time. Fontaine was not confident enough to say this would be the last however as he looked up and was immediately greeted with the muzzle of a gun.

There was a little something to think about when seeing a gun as the first thing upon waking. On the one hand you'd likely gotten yourself into a horrible situation that needed digging out of – most often he'd done that with his words. Hadn't needed to in years but Frank was fairly sure he'd not lost the skill. But on the other hand it meant whoever was pointing it at you did not have killing you at the forefront of their mind. At least not right off the bat anyway. If they had the bullet would have already been lodged in your skull and waking up to this sight not a viable option.

So he already had an advantage – they wanted something and when people wanted something Frank was almost always willing to let them think they could have it. Right up to the point where he was in possession of the gun.

Cautious and slowly as was humanly possible, despite being positive he wasn't at immediate risk of copping the bullet just yet, Fontaine eased himself up right with his eyes fixed on the mouth of the gun. It followed his movements.

With a great deal of self control Fontaine finally slide his gaze past what could be the last thing he ever saw in this life to the man that held it.

Frank could see the calloused, ink stained fingers study around the weapon, not so much as a tremor. The hold of a man who had put more than his fair share of suckers in the ground and was more than willing to add another to that list. He'd faced with men that hadn't so much as landed a punch on another poor bastard and he'd faced men like this one before as well – one more difficult to navigate than the other.

Looking past mortality Fontaine finally fixed his eyes on the face of his would be executor and felt his blood run cold in a way it simply hadn't for years.

He'd heard but not believed. Even now, belief skirted out of his reach as he saw him standing there.

Atlas.

Had he not manufactured the man himself he would not have even allowed the name to cross his mind. But he was looking at the real deal. He'd crafted that image, right down to those few details that never came out the way he'd initially imagined them – all of it neatly packaged in front of him. Where Steinman's blade had failed in reality, it was captured perfectly in this man. Where the face had been just a little less trustworthy than he would have liked – marred by the ghost of Fontaine behind Atlas's eyes when he looked in the mirror – it was absent here.

It was not the lie of Atlas. It couldn't be. Not when Frank was right there; still very much Fontaine facing what ought to have been a fairytale.

He'd never been much of a fairytale kinda kid either.

Silently cold eyes returned Fontaine's stare and he could practically feel the other man taking in his expression. The muted horror and confusion that must have played across his unguarded face. But he was nothing if not an effective conman and any honest reaction was gone a second after it appeared, no matter how startled he was.

"Out with it then." The lookalike demanded. "Where'd you hide it?"

Somehow hearing that voice come out of the standing man still sent a shock through Frank's system. That was his voice; he'd practiced it for hours on end while planning how best to step out of Fontaine's silhouette and into Atlas's revolution. It was his voice – just twisted.

Now it came smoothly, viciously out of the mouth of this…this imposter.

The word was ludicrous enough, all things considered, that Frank almost found it in him to laugh at it. After all, what was he if not the grand imposter himself?

"And what is this supposed to be?" He ventured, packing as much derision into the words as he dared with that gun hovering forebodingly. "Some kind'a gag?"

Apparently this was not the approach the stand in Irishman was in any mood to tolerate and Fontaine swallowed around the narrow opening of the gun as it pressed promisingly into the dip of his throat.

No matter what this might be, that gun felt coldenough to silence Frank for a moment. "I asked." The stranger with a familiar face reiterated through grit teeth. "The genetic key – where have you stashed it?"

It was only now that Frank took stock of the room. A small tornado might as well have come through the place for how well it had faired, everything was out of place. Turned upside down in search of the key but despite these efforts, he hadn't found it.

Fontaine sneered; of course he hadn't found it. If he wanted something hidden something he buried it deeper than Ryan managed to sink his little slice of broken utopia under the sea.

He didn't care who this bastard was; he wasn't getting anywhere near that key. "How's about you put the gun down and we-" It pressed in a little deeper into the hollow of his throat and Fontaine's tone shifted again. "Fine, if it makes you feel better. The key…" He paused; struggling as though it were some great difficulty to tell the truth but what came out of the lump in his throat was nothing of the sort. "…I squirreled it away as soon as I got it. You want it you're going to have to dig it back out. Sure we can cut a little deal."

It was not that hard really. Fontaine would simply direct the man down the wrong path, get him clear of the little hideaway and let the splicers take care of it. Of course if he could get him to falter with that gun for even a second he'd snatch it away. Wouldn't bother making demands, a quick shot between the eyes and a body to mop up.

Easy he'd done this before, not a probl—

"That right, is it Fontaine?" That was not the tone of a sold man. "Way I hear it you weave a right fantasy each time you open your feckin' mouth. Seeing as the rest o' Rapture seems to think you've been popping out daisies for a good couple of years now."

Irritation began to eat away at the back of Fontaine's mind and he was becoming increasingly aware of the gun's metal warming against his neck the longer it lingered. "You got me at a disadvantage stranger." He began, each word a low growl. "You seem to know a good deal about me, I don't even have your name. Hard feeling honest with a nameless man holding a gun to my person."

And for the first time the lookalike wavered.

Not with the gun, never with the gun, but with his stare. Those icy eyes flickered faintly and Fontaine knew self-doubt when he saw it.

He very nearly made a remark along the lines of 'Don't even know your own name? Had it from the day you were born and you don't know it?' but between the gun and the small swell of discomfort such a…let's say ironic comment invoked, he left it unsaid. Instead he observed, watched closely for any other little signs of weakness he could pick apart. At a guess it seemed the poor sodding bastard didn't quite know what was happening in his own head.

Spliced up at some point, that or Rapture was getting to him like it tended to everyone. Losing it, Fontaine ventured internally while thinking that it would be rather nice if this bastard would be kind enough to have his mental break somewhere else.

The moment of uncertainty had come and gone inside of the man and was quickly superseded by anger. "Got a death wish have you, Fontaine?" He snarled and must have known his mistake the moment he made it because Fontaine watched the strangers eyes turn hard the second the words left his mouth.

Making verbal threats was often more a failing than a demonstration of power. Now he'd spoken one he'd have to back it up or risk every threat from there ringing hollow in his captive audience's head.

With out so much as another word the gun shifted just slightly and Fontaine was bracing before the thought to do so truly settled in his head.

A second later the sound of a bullet tearing out of the barrel ripped through the air with a violent crack. Made louder by the small space they inhabited.

For the stranger's weakness, Frank caught a bullet in the shoulder.

He howled, hand instinctively going for the damaged area. He would have done more than that but once again the metal was pressing against him warningly. Hot now, still vibrating from having just been fired as it bore painfully into the center of his head. The bastard wasn't even going to let him assess the damage, not even to see how much blood there was going to be. And yet when his eyes turned back to the bastard that had just shot him, his scope was met with a slightly shaken stare, as though the stranger had taken the blow rather than him.

"I don't need you to find it." He continued, voice tight with some barely constrained anger. He wanted to shoot again that much was clear but he was controlling that impulse. For now. He did not seem a man of incredible patience.

"Just makes the whole process a lot easier if you choke up the truth for once in your miserable bleeding life, Gorland."

They both stopped.

The bullet that had torn through him only seconds early did not stop him as abruptly or as wholly as that name did. "Gorland...?" Frank repeated slowly, the name slipping off his tongue chunkily. Rusty from disuse. Hadn't heard that one since he was topside. Not so much as once.

Anyone and everyone who might have even vaguely remembered it was long dead and gone. Even old Peach who may have heard of Gorland in passing had kicked the bucket by now – courtesy of his little genetic freak – but here it was. Falling out of the mouth of a stranger.

A stranger that did not look or sound like a stranger. A stranger that did so much as feel like a stranger.

There was another moment of uncertainty. Longer, harder to cover with anger and this time when the man's fingers tightened around the gun they did so till they turned white and began to shake – but he did not pull the trigger again. This time it was an uncertainty both men shared in. "It don't matter." He whispered more to himself than Fontaine. As though he needed to convince himself. "It…none of it matters. The only thing that matters even a tiny bit in this rust bucket is getting that kid topside – as promised."

"I watched the kid haul ass all over Rapture!" Fontaine snapped back, a few nerves he hadn't known he had jumping upon having heard such an outdated con. Once he was done with a name it was supposed to die and stay dead. "He never came into contact with you. If he had-"

The answering words stopped Fontaine dead. "I'm Atlas." The lookalike spoke slowly, each word icy as he repeated an ancient lie. "And I aim to keep you alive."

He couldn't even laugh.

Somewhere in the back of his head Fontaine knew he ought to have been in hysterics. Either because he could not believe that this bastard had actually just said that, or because he'd just heard out loud exactly what he'd been thinking in the little stupid corners of his mind. That little whisper of 'isn't it too close to the perfect imitation?' he just hadn't been able to muzzle since he first heard the familiar voice.

"What... what kind of a joke is this?" Frank tried to conjure up the same derision he'd managed the first time he asked something of a similar nature. But his tone shook, the mocking smirk on his face was clumsy as it threatened to fall apart into an expression of abject horror. He should have brushed this off with ease but... and he must have lost his god damn mind, because he believed this was Atlas.

Through grit teeth the Irishman began to show his own cracks in earnest.

The hand clasping the gun began to shake and it had nothing to do with fear of bloodying his hands. "I said it don't matter." He reiterated sharply although the louder he asserted this fact the less it seemed to stick. Because for as shaken as Fontaine was, this Atlas claim was double that.

He could see it clearly now in the small peculiarities in how the man conducted himself. Those moments of doubt finally cementing themselves with purpose in Fontaine's thoughts. This was one of those messy situations that was more likely to get worse before it got better.

"And where exactly did you pick up a name like that? Last I checked that one I did not steal."

Frank had once been so excited about that new idea once upon a time. Identity theft had seemed so cunning as he broke in the former Fontaine's coat and name. Just like that he'd been Fontaine, not a soul under the sea surface knew him as anything else until Atlas had been conjured up.

But...Gorland he'd said. The con before Fontaine, he said it like an accusation, not a name. Exactly how many other discarded aliases did he have rattling around up there?

Then for the first time since the pair crossed paths a smile quirked at Atlas's lips. A mockery of one at least. All bitter resentment and hard edges, nothing that made a smile warm to be found in that expression. "Want a list do ya?" He suggested coldly. "Got so many you'd be grey and dead before we got through it."

Cute and not entirely inaccurate. While the list was extensive, stretching back to that first orphanage he did not remember in the slightest beyond leaving, it was by no means endless. In fact he was looking at its end right now. What should have been its end at least.

Then the million dollar question. "And how did you come into possession of it, huh?"

The uncertainty returned.

A pinch in the revolutionary's expression followed by a slight waving of his gaze. The gun stayed fixed and so too did Fontaine. For all his claims of indifference the man was terribly torn up by what he said didn't matter. "Rapture is hell on earth alright." He muttered grimly. "Seen things that'd drive better men mad, done things that'd have those same men killing themselves as penance and it still wouldn't be enough." Weak men Fontaine's mind idly supplied though he imagined he and this man would not agree on what constituted for a 'better man'. "But this one takes the ribbon I'll confess." Atlas muttered narrowed eyes back on Fontaine's face as though he might somehow find the answers he lacked there. The key no longer seemed to be the first of his concerns either.

"How do I know the things I know?" He asked aloud and immediately followed the hollow query with another that set Fontaine's insides to ice. "How do I know you? Better than my own life I know you. All those names, all those lies all piled on top of one another and I know each one. All these useless secrets." The gun made little noise as it inched upwards and Fontaine found this inappropriate, he'd expected to hear a click before a bang. "The only thing I don't bleeding know is what you did with that key. The only thing I need to know and..."

The flash of rage across the man's face quickly drowned the growing hysteria. He was a man of action, a break down was not on his schedule it seemed. "Tell me where that genetic key is Frank or so help me I'll see us both cold and rotting."

Another threat, slightly different from the one prior but Fontaine expected another bullet to accompany it all the same. He braced awaiting the inevitable crack as the trigger was pulled but was met with only silence. It was through this pause that something else gradually sank in for him.

His shoulder was not wet.

The pain of the first and currently only bullet still tore its way through him. It ached and throbbed horribly with a promise of hours more to come. But there was no sticky gathering of drying blood or moulding of red soaked clothes to his injury. There was no physical tell of damage at all.

Forgetting his caution in a moment of supreme stupidity and recklessness Fontaine looked to his shoulder and sure enough found no evidence of any harm done. The pain he felt was persistent but there was no injury, just that lingering phantom burn.

Another of the man's uncertainties now made sense but not much else beyond that.

"I wouldn't get too many bright ideas." Atlas told him flatly. "By my guess one of these through your skull would just as well do you in as any real bullet would. Judging by how you howled earlier the sensation is accurate enough, and I don't imagine your brain would restart after a shock like that."

He then added after a beat of silence. "Don't want to." Apparently deciding that Fontaine was not getting up to speed fast enough he went on. "Because what I've also garnered while you were a useless heap on the floor, is that there's no promise that I get the controls if you kick the bucket." While Atlas attempted to deliver this information as a purely clinical assessment of their current position it showed in his uneasy smile just how shaken he really was. Here stood a man trying to calmly and coherently evaluate his standing in the universe with the knowledge that he barely had any at all to speak of. "Still, while not my first choice I'd take it over letting you do one more wrong by that boy."

Reeling Fontaine looked for some external explanation. Between monster girls that drank blood from bodies, metal men that were barely even men anymore and a boy that grew in the blink of an eye with a laundry list of metal quirks - mysticism didn't seem all that unusual. But they all had a science behind them, something that made it fit into reality and surely this too had one he only needed to find the-

Clink.

In his alarmed state Fontaine failed to notice until his fingers brushed it and caused the item to make a soft chime as it skidded back a small distance. The shattered remains of a plasmid bottle.

Then it all fit.

Fell into place in Fontaine's mind with what was nearly an audible click. There was no great fanfare involved with this revelation, just a final piece neatly slotting into place to fill out what had previously made no sense. "You're not real." Fontaine muttered getting a scathing look from Atlas for his words. "You're in my head."

And in the dingy lighting Fontaine could still make out every muscle on that perfectly crafted lie fall into a grim acceptance.

He'd known but still not truly felt the weight of that truth till Frank said it out loud for them both to hear.

For once Fontaine felt he spoke with both their best interests in mind when the first coherent thought he had following this realisation was. "Fucking Schugong."

A large portion of playing a sucessful con was being able to adpt rapidly as the scene changed. It was a preformance piece that kept shifting depending on what the other actos did. It was the most control Frank ever knowingly and willingly parted with, for as much as it pained him to leave any part of the script in hands less competant then his own, this was by no means a solo preformance. As such he'd become acustomed to these unusual little twists and oddities that he sure as shit never would have put down on the page. But this particular one was enique from those other changes. Partly because it left Frank at a loss for how to respond and partly because this time it was entierly of his own doing.

So forgive him for the few seconds his brain flat out ceased to send messages to the rest of his person. Frank was not the type to freeze no matter how bad things got, but he froze now.

If he were to look at the bright side – and oddly enough he usually did – Fontaine could at least be satisfied knowing he hadn't mutated any from his little trip down the DNA slaughter house. A bright side, yes, but not the brightest he'd ever had to look at.

But as he always did, Frank adapted.

Atlas startled when Fontaine moved, having foolishly fallen into a sense of security with the man having been so still previously.

He flinched before he reacted and Frank was already on his own two feet, hand lashing out to sntach up his duplicate's wrist and the gun. Even though he'd been banking on tangibility it still sent a thrill down his spine when Atlas felt solid under his fingers and that thrill became distinctly one of satisfaction when the man released a pained sound in response to being grabbed and twisted. The gun was lost in a moment of surprise that Atlas had not accounted for and internally Fontaine mocked the other man. He might have been the big bad revolutionary hero in this little fantasy of theirs but he clearly had been out of pracitce for too long.

Snarling Atlas finally caught back up to speed and while Frank had briefly marveled when he'd been able to lay hands on the imaginary man, he was less of a fan when that small physicality was turned back on him.

Atlas hit hard, this he'd instinctively expected. He'd not written up the Atlas lie to have a weak left hook.

The blow sucessfully knocked Fontaine back a few steps as his cheek just under his right eye positively lit up in a white hot burst of pain. Much like the bullet he felt it as though the injury had been real but just as before Fontaine did not expect to find a bruise come the next morning. Didn't make the throbbing any more enjoyable of course.

With the distance between them once again and the gun just that little bit too far out of reach the men both stopped. Atlas looked furious, chest heaving with those sharp eyes of his burning lowly with the sort of loathing Fontaine just couldnt muster up for anyone now days. But he was not angry in response. Frank wasn't sure what he felt currently, knowing that those plasmids had definitely done somehing to his head. He didnt know what he should be feeling and he couldn't come up with any benifitial emotional responses to this...so he simply stared back at all the anger Atlas had to offer.

Finally Atlas spoke, spitting the words out as though every one left a foul taste behind. "Cheap shot, Fontiane."

"No such thing when you wake up with a gun being pointed at you."

He could have sworn Atlas almost smiled at that. He knew it would have been that same hurmourless sneer of course and so was not at all dissapointed when it failed to fully form. "So that's your plan is it? Think you can somehow slug this out?"

Fontaine did not actually have a plan for this. Frustrating, seeing as he normally accounted for all potential problems long before a con started. Miss McClintock for example. Granted that solution had been almost laughably easy. This one he didn't quite know how to approach. "You're not real." Fontaine said simply, as though tht would just explain away the man in front of him. "You're just a fairy tale." One he didn't need anymore at that. Like Gorland, Atlas should have been shelved and promptly forgotten by now.

"Yeah, you can tell yourself that as you're going brain dead."

For as fake as Atlas might have been, Fontaine believed the threat he posed was very genuine. So he rationalised. "You'd be killing both of us."

"A small price."

There was no greater price.

Fontaine's teeth ground together painfully as finally the anger that had been lacking made an appearance. There was no greater price than his life. Everything else actually had a price, but not him.

All other lives varied in how valuable they were to him, but his own had never and would never come in second to anything else. But Fontaine was getting the nauseating feeling that this con gone wrong put many things above his own life. Namely petty satisfaction.

Granted if something was to somehow trump his own continued existance, revenge would have come the closest. That thought prompted Fontaine to glance towards the monitors, left untouched by Atlas's earlier rampage through his safe house. Now Fontaine was no scientist, but he found himself curious on the subject from time to time, enough to wonder if Atlas could touch things or if he'd needed to crawl himself into Fontaine's body in order to pull that off.

This was new territory but Frank was not stupid. Atlas had already eluded to the fact he could take the controls from him under some circumstances. Now he just had to be careful that did not happen a second time.

Catching the direction of his stare a second snarl, more gutteral and vicious than the first, tore out of Atlas. "Yeah." He snapped at Fontaine. "It's a small price to pay for theirs."

Fontaine could have screamed, nearly did in fact. The lives of a cluster of monsters in a sunken city worth more than their own - his own - skin? The insult alone left him seeing red. "Not that you'd know anything about sacrifice." The fake went on icily.

"Your own flesh and blood wouldn't make so much as a blip on your radar if they weren't useful." Fontaine could feel the moment Atlas thought better of those words but did nothing to stop the inevitable amendment. "Didn't make so much as a blip."

At that, Frank snapped. "Get the fuck out." He hissed. "Whatever mental hole you crawled out of, get back to it, stay there and shrivel away. You're just an outdated con, I don't need you anymore."

"Fancy that." Atlas crowd back, the spiteful smile he'd failed to conjured up erlier on full display now as he regarded Fontaine in the way one would a partiocular unsight bug. He kept to the train of thought that had Fontaine snap in the first place. This was a trait they apparently shared - ripping into people's obvious weaknesses.

"Frankie doesn't need me anymore. Ain't that just the oldest tune you damn well know."

His insides were turning cold. He wanted the fake to shut up. Frank didn't need to hear this rubbish from some science born mistake. Those resentful words rung too similar to ones he'd already heard, maybe ones he'd thought. Maybe-

He needed to shut it up.

The gun that had been knocked away from them was still too many steps to reach easily and once one of them broke the stillness thre was an even chance as to who would reach it first. That gun might be as real as Atlas was, but perhaps that was only as real as it needed to be in order to erase the illusion. Well Frank had never been one to sit on his thumbs. Although he would have liked to have had a better plan that simpyl making the first move for this one.

But he had to shut it up.

Like the first time Fontaine moved Atlas was taken off guard. This time however he did not flinch. The moment Frank broke from his adopted stance and darted towards the side, closer to the gun that had fallen down between the rickety bed frame and the mold crusted wall, Atlas moved as well. Now Fontaine chalked it up to his own cleverness that Atlas was such a physically imposiing figure but he rather wished in that moment hed gone for a less impressive lie when make the man up.

He made it to the side of the bed, knocking an upturned chair out of his way as he dove for the little crevice the gun had fallen into. He'd just reached inside when the delay between he and Atlas abruptly vanished.

Again the deceptively real pain blossomed in Frank's side as Atlas's boot collided neatly with it. Some old forgotten bruise groaning in agony as it was set afire by the new contact all over again. The force of the kick was so strong that Fontaine was actually knocked off balane and thrown the ground, but what did that matter when his fingers were securely around rapidly heating metal?

His expression was postively feral as he whipped the gun up and had just a split second to register the surprise in Atlas's face before he pulled the trigger.

As always there was part of him that mourned the opportunity to gloat, to drive home his victory but he'd already rightly fucked himself over with the kid becuause of his victory speech, so he spared not a word for this one. Just a smirk, a click and then a deafening bang.

The gun went off with a crack and Atlas went down that same second, almost no time between the two events. The echo of the man's body hitting the ground however did come a second later and it felt like finality. The following silence like the relief Fontaine had been wishing for.

For a moment or two Fontaine stayed there on the ground with his aching side and the vibrating gun, just remembering how to breathe correctly. Slowly the nerves settled and with one shaky breath that became an airy laugh Fontaine let the gun clatter back to the ground so he could drag his fingers over his face. The laughter continued for a little while longer until gradually Fontaine calmed down enough to just focus on breathing.

Despite having those little sea slugs and monsters to thank for most of his success within rapture...he really truly hated ADAM.

He was still sitting there focusing on his own heartbeat as it played in his head when the relief was broken but a heaving gasp that had not come from him.

Freezing Fontaine's eyes peeled wide open behind his fingers, staring blankly into the darkness under them. No. He thought desperately. No fucking way.

Then laughter.

Strained, vindictive laughter chased away all the remaining heat in Fontaine's body, leaving icy dread in its wake. "Well would you look at that." The hallucination remarked. "Seems this is a one way out sort of deal."

Slowly Fontaine's hands fell away from his face as he was left staring at Atlas.

A hole in the man's forehead was weeping a thin trail of blood. Not the heavy flow of a real flesh and blood creature as it's heat pumped the important substance through its veins in the ever uphill battle to keep it alive. Just the slow dribble of an already long dead corpse split open anew. That trickle of blood leisurely made its way down the face of the man that was not genuinely alive or dead and got caught in the path of Atlas's smirk.

All teeth in that sharks smile, funny Fontaine knew it'd be the one he didn't see coming.

"Any other cards to play, Gorland?"


	4. Chapter 4

They'd reached a stalemate.

Should Atlas decide to make good on frying Fontaine's mind that was it. Game over, but the double himself could not seem to be killed. Any damage Fontaine might have dished out was gone within mere moments. It would seem he'd lost before the fight even really started – but Atlas had his own limitations.

He was not in control of the body.

Not for lack of trying of course. Fontaine had nearly felt his soul part from his body the first time Atlas tried to forcibly slip inside his skin. The resulting experience excruciating for both parties, leaving both man breathless and shaking from the waves of pain that rolled through them.

"You…" Frank gasped, struggling to breath as the shockwaves of pain gradually receded. "You are a fucking maniac."

"Could say the same for you." Atlas tossed right back, eyeing the now empty bottles that had once contained plasmids as he braced himself against the wall by their side. "Not that you were ever the bleeding picture of sanity."

There had been no answering rebuttal for that. Frank attributed it to his focus being exclusively on not throwing up after that experience.

This little set up of theirs did not come with an instruction manual unfortunately. As such neither he nor Atlas could garner the upper hand and were forced to simply exist within the same living space until one of them came up with a brilliant new way to best the other.

Atlas had not entirely given up the exercise of attempting to take over but had for the time being stepped back, taking time to think and find another way to gain control.

Every second Fontaine spent feeling that lie's existence at his back was another second he vowed to spend grinding the kids face into the pavement.

The only thing both he and the parasite seemed to agree on was the importance of the screens.

Jack had made quite good time all things considered.

Had he not been stuck dealing with his little problem of dualism then he would have head down there to block the kid's path himself but instead had to settle for cutting him off at Point Prometheus.

Atlas had kicked up an almighty fuss when Mother Goose announced her plan to have the boy make a greater monster of himself than he already was. Fontaine echoed his protests with a sneer, a one-way street he'd reminded and watched as Atlas seethed. All that apprehension and rage melding together into some wretchedly genuine feeling of concern for the brat and the little monsters he was collecting.

Fontaine himself had his own fears and frustrations – none of it stemmed from concern for the kid so much as of the kid. He was getting closer and just as it had always been it seemed there was absolutely no force in Rapture that could impede him.

All these little doubts and uncertainties manifested themselves it seemed inside of the lie.

They'd briefly lost sight of Jack. The kid had just gotten through with making himself reek half as bad as those tin daddies and moved onto looking for a helmet and gloves to finish the ghoulish outfit when the cameras lost him. Fontaine made no great efforts to relocate him, having already decided it was time to move locations. The kid was coming to the pinnacle of Rapture. A place where even the sunlight could reach if the conditions were just right. Frankie knew that Ryan had been able to see the sun up here at times and wondered if he shunned the surface right to the very end. Likely, the stubborn old bastard.

As Fontaine strode unimpeded into the highest point of Rapture he was greeted with the funneling system that Suchong had rigged up all that time ago. It was supposedly safe enough and would push all of the ADAM he desired straight into his blood stream but with the ghost of the con lingering at his back Fontaine ignored it for the time being. He could feel the crackle of lightening under his fingertips, ice along the lines of his veins and heat boiling away in his chest – he'd manage with just this.

But he could still feel the kid chasing at his heels and the pressure was beginning to make his head pound. So much so that he ended up glancing the monstrous design more than he ought to for a man with no intent to use it.

To make matters worse the fake was not silent in the way it existed. Fontaine could hear its footsteps echoing behind him, predatory and assured in each footfall. The way he'd walked when the lie still landed over his own name as a truth.

Once the kid was dealt with he could properly turn his attention onto destroying whatever it was that those crackpot scientists had managed to create inside of his skull.

Then his attention was grabbed away from the ADAM Inducer Device, attention dragged back to the kid's progress. Wouldn't have even recognized him were it not for that decidedly meddlesome way he moved. So unlike the aimless meandering wander of a true big daddy. He'd completed his little charade and Fontaine's brief time of silence broke, with it came an onslaught of angry words. That was all he had left for the boy, no more sweet lies or little promises of freedom – just this unadulterated cruelty.

"Where you gonna go?" He demanded of his silent listener. "Your life? Your family? They're a fairy tale, kid. No more real than something you read about in the Saturday Evening Post. Poor bastard. A motherless freak whipped up in a half-baked science experiment." And as he'd long since given up getting a rise out of Jack he immediately tossed the radio aside in one of his many moments of rage.

Why was he so bleedingly quiet? He thought again. Why did he never shout back all the accusations and denunciations he no doubt had rattling around that farm boy written brain of his?

This silent treatment – Frank thought again – was insufferable.

"Starting to show your cracks, huh Fontaine?"

He wished he could have claimed to forget about the specter's presence, wished he had been able to since it spawned in front of him for the very first time. But as it was he'd simply let that moment of anger overrule his higher reasoning. He was a man who lived his life as a lie – performance was not something he lacked finesse in, but it was difficult to conjure up an act in front of the thing that was not even a man. Just some wretched illusion ADAM had saddled him with.

And yet he turned on it as he would have any living person, spiteful and vicious as he could manage bar putting another bullet in him – it'd be a waste of ammunition. "And just for _you_ I'll take some special care when I round up Mother Goose and her brood." Atlas's familiar eyes turned colder and his expression wasn't a mocking one anymore. In turn Fontaine began to smirk. "Must be maddening, being completely and utterly useless. Not even real – just some forgotten relic."

Just as Fontaine had felt that the matter was settled, Atlas rightly reminded of his standing in the world or lack there of – the relic spoke again.

"And where are _you_ going to go?"

It was not the question he'd thrown at Jack only moments earlier being hurled right back at him that gave Frank a moment of pause. Rather it was the knowing way Atlas said it. Cold and knowing, as though he really could see right through every part of Fontaine.

It occurred to him now that perhaps this lie knew his real name. The only other person left on earth who might.

Just as the retort was bubbling up Atlas went on, they both knew that words had always been Frank's weapon of choice. Why fight himself when he could talk someone into submission or convince them to turn the gun on themselves? Hard labour was not in his nature as it had been Atlas's. "Your life? Your family?" Atlas rattled off the words with a careless flick of his wrist followed up by a dry, pitiless smirk. "You don't happen to own either – best you had were about as real as the kid's were."

The shine in Atlas's eye seemed to Fontaine to be too similar to his creator, but he supposed that was to be expected. Atlas might have been an actor himself had he been real – that wholesome revolutionary image couldn't be real even if Atlas was. After all he was a revolutionary that bore the blood of children on his hands readily. The difference between he and Fontaine – in its cruelest and purest form was intent.

"Your life. Which of your lives can you hide behind now, Fontaine? Even that lie is expiring soon and all you got left is 'Frank'." There was a short pause and Fontaine knew exactly what had crossed the thing's mind in the way the cold upward curl on its lips stretched into a shark like grin. "Your family. Well now there's not much left of that is there, Frankie?"

And just as before Frank snapped at the thing on this point. The bark of "Shut the fuck up!" Did nothing to silence it and Fontaine was reaching for his gun before his higher reasoning to chime in and remind him of the futility unloading a few bullets into the thing would bring.

Two rapid shots of the gun silenced it for a moment, just as its mouth had opened to speak what would no doubt have been condemning words. Damn it he knew. _He knew already so shut up_.

The first of the bullets took the thing by the shoulder, throwing its whole body back as the second blew a hole in the left side of Atlas's image. Just as the first time, the thing's body fell to the floor seemingly dead and Fontaine took those precious seconds of silence to try and recompose himself.

This thing seemed hand crafted by not only himself but some perversion of justice. He did not give the concept of god the time of day but now knew that if such an entity existed they were a cruel, unjust creature that allowed men like himself to do all they did only to then turn it's jeering onto them when all the innocents were spent and gone. The thing inside of his head spoke of things he'd rather forget, its existence alone was a plight he did not know he could survive through.

Trickling on by the seconds felt like small eternities and when Fontaine looked down at the body that would be returning before long he saw the insides of the thing. It looked human enough, skin peeled back from its skull, blood sprayed out across the floor from where it had hit and continuing to leak and drip to the ground. Slow, so slow, as it had no heartbeat even as its mouth continued to move.

Then slowly the eye not left damaged by the bullet fluttered open and the fake revolutionary dog began to ease himself upright. Frank watched it press a hand to his ruined face and pull it back to look at the blood staining its hand only to laugh with shredded lips. Gurgling and coughing as the sound tore out of it before the thing's image could knit itself back together.

Gradually, at its own pace as though time itself was no restraint of its, the thing looked up at its creator and Frank for a split second wondered if it saw the same pitiless god that he envisioned inside of its unwilling creator. With that ruined mouth the creature spoke again.

"It's strange, don't you think?" It asked, a judgment dressed up like an enquiry. I know they never existed. I _know_ that. Never had a family to lose me – hurts like a right bitch knowing that. But you…ha you had family to lose."

Atlas's one eye and the void where the left had been stared into Frank, his sneer spoke of mocking but those eyes were not. They were some awestruck, miserable look – as though Fontaine's existence was an inexcusable, unexplainable error. "And _you_ don't feel a bleedin' thing."

Then as though it knew just which words to pick to cement every syllable into Frank's memory it smiled through that broken face in a way that was almost pitying and echoed an old lie back at him.

"Can you imagine a bigger fool than that?"

He did not need to see the thing as it's face stitched itself back together, not leaving so much as a blemish from his outburst behind. Frank turned away and walked as though there were really anyway to distance himself from the parasite that had taken up residency inside of his thoughts. He knew it was there until he could find a way to cut it out like a tumor, useless yet damaging until removed.

His thoughts turned briefly back to Jack. The distant squish of the thing's flesh weaving itself back into one piece echoing behind him.

Wearily his gaze turned to the discarded radio and then without another thought he went to retrieve it. The little box had fallen in front of the Inducer Device and that was where Fontaine's gaze lingered as he spoke into the worn box. It had survived through more than one outburst from its owner and had managed to endure this one as well.

When he spoke it was with the usual derisive drawl. To an outsider, to Jack, it likely sounded the same as all the other hecklings as Fontaine's mocking words came crawling through the airwaves. "That's it, kid." He began. "It's been a long road. You don't even remember most of it. Put you on a sub when you were just a sprout." That was not much of a threat, nor was it much of a taunt and Frank wondered why this was the first thing he'd thought to say.

He followed it up nearly immediately with something cruel. As though this moment of showmanship would somehow wash away the one before it. This one he said because he knew the thing behind him putting its face back together was listening. Always listening.

"I really wound you up with that wife and child bit: "Oh, me poor Moira. Ah, me wee baby Patrick." Maybe one day I'll get me a real family. They play well with the suckers."

A mistake. Frank realised as he lowered the radio and could practically feel Atlas's eyes on him. Both now, it regenerated quickly.

He could feel it's judgment before the words began and there was very little he could do to keep it quiet bar putting more holes into it. A time and bullet waster ultimately. So he had no choice but to suffer its words.

"You know better than anyone the best lies are made from twisted truths. You think I didn't hear that duality?" It asked and Frank could imagine its expression of ridicule with agonizing clarity. "You can't _lie_ to me Fontaine; I've been in your head. You think I didn't notice?"

Then a shift. "My Moira…" The cruelty faded and there was a second of tenderness in the delusion's voice.

"Well she might be a pretty fantasy but there was a truth behind her. I watched that truth die." It was affection there, truer and more potent than Fontaine's lies had ever been able to capture. He thought it almost sad that this thing loved a woman it never really knew as deeply and wholly as it did. That it - a thing that was just as much a fabrication as she had been – could muster up that sort of devotion and affection where Fontaine did not.

"Amazing – you managed to kill her twice."

Three times this would make it.

Three times Frank's temper got the best of him and he turned on the thing inside of him. On the third it was with angry words that tore out of some deep, vicious part of him and Fontaine had not intended to let fester for so many years. "You want to sit there and play the part of the couch doctor, huh?" He demanded, voice rising into a shout as he whirled on the other man who had only just righted himself, any traces of the prior injury wiped away as the illusion set itself back to a default setting. "You want to play mind games for a while? That what you goddamn want, Atlas? Well go right ahead because incase it has escaped your notice – there's not a damn thing you can say or do that changes anything!"

They were playing by his rules. They were all dancing to his tune now.

"This here is my city, this is _my_ showground now and you ain't got a card left to play. Barely had one to play in the first place."

 _His arena, his level – his stage._

"So go ahead you two-bit con! Talk away, pick at my open wounds, pull at whatever loose threads you can find floating around in my head – it won't change a damn thing when you and the boy are dead as dust!"

 _You're quite the little showman, Frankie._

"Don't you get it?" He asked, able to feel the muscles in his face twisting into some feral variation of a widened smirk. Manic energy bubbling under his flesh as he spoke. Anything to kill its voice. "There's nothing you or he can do to stop me!"

With one arm thrown out across his body Fontaine gestured to the point all the ADAM in Rapture would race to on his command. The ultimate final step, the thing that would put both Jack and this Irish lie into the ground. Buried and forgotten once he was finished with them just the way it always should have been.

It was not with a smile or a glare that Atlas regarded him now.

Just a flat, leveled look that somehow managed to strike through him more cleanly than any snarl or shouted word could have. He was just…staring at Frank, as though there was some great tragedy he couldn't see. As though there was something so obvious that only he failed to see that everyone else understood.

In a heartbeat it was all to much, everything had piled too high and Frank could only see that look that his façade gave him.

He could only think the silence that was so loud from his kid.

Frankie could only remember how both had been given to him before from people long gone and the pressure was only building higher. Something had to give, something had to change and Fontaine wasn't going to let it be himself.

He was a man who lived with his lies close to his person. So much so that beyond them there was not much of a person to speak of. There were a few core things he could always use to ground himself so as not to fall too far into an act – those things no loner existed. All he had now was this knowledge that he must be the one to come out on top, he must be the one to win. If he didn't see this to the end, what was the point of all he'd done to come to this point?

Frank would need a new lie before long. Otherwise what was he left with?

He'd, for a time, truly been Atlas. Just as he'd been Fontaine, and Gorland, Moskowitz, Peterson, Barris, Blair, Lytle—

 _Revolutionary, Tycoon, Bar Keep, Mobster, Bookkeeper, Liar, Conman, little brother—_

"I am going to take the kid apart right in front of you Atlas. And oh let me tell you, it's real disappointing you're not actually alive so I could give you the same treatment. Guess once this is over I'll have all the time in the world to see just how much that fake body of yours can recover from – I'll have bullets to spare."

It was with that single-minded determination that Frank turned for the machine, fully intending to plug himself in and soak up every last drop of ADAM the city had to offer. He would not let his boy kill him here.

But he was barely at the top of the platform when he heard those previously steady footfalls racing up behind him, having broken into a dead sprint each pound of the heavy boots against the surface of the machine seeming to vibrate through the metal as Atlas lunged for him.

He heard the illusion shout his name as he did and for just a second process it as his actual name – it sounded so rusty in his own head that for a moment he failed to recognize it.

Then Atlas's fingers were at his wrist and that pain they'd felt wash over them the last time Atlas attempted to push Fontaine aside for control returned. Twice as excruciating and yet Atlas did not let go even as both men screamed. Instead those fingers bit in more roughly and he pulled Frank towards him, grabbing onto his shoulder with the other hand. From that contact more pain exploded through his body and those screams became desperate, animalistic howls with human speech littered between them. Curses, threats even the occasional plea to be released pulling itself out of Frank as he tried in vain to tug away from the illusion that was far too solid a creature.

And through the agony and the screaming Atlas's voice rung out. It might have been the creature speaking, it might have been some wretched voiceless connection that gave language to its intent inside his skull, it didn't matter the words came through clearly. "You're going to fucking get us both killed!" Atlas snarled and Frank's mind might have reflected he'd once accused the man of the same exact thing were it not so fully of static in that moment. Static and that Irish growl. "For god's sake! Can't you for just once in your miserable life stop being so cowardly!?"

On that final word it all stopped.

For a second Fontaine felt nothing at all. The pain all stopped but so did everything else. Numb and nothing, he lost even the sensation of the delusions fingers at his wrist and then he was falling.

The world ripped itself out from under him and Frank fell back not realising until he hit the ground below the machine's podium that his body had remained standing there.

It took him all of three seconds to comprehend what had happened.

"No." He gasped, forcing the words out even though there was no sensation coursing through him and every breath event uneven as it pulled into his lungs, leaving every word weak and airy as he struggled for them. "No, get out. Get out of my body."

Atlas stood in Fontaine's body, turning his own hands over in amazement, simply flexing those fingers that did not belong to him before finally facing the rightful owner who was just as much an illusion as he'd been minutes prior. The awe died away and Atlas straightened out that borrowed spine, adopting a look of determination. "Setting things straight." He repeated the first words Frank had ever heard him say. "Just as promised."

Horror tore through Frank as he tried to stumble back to his feet but found moving to be difficult. Nothing felt right, it was all too light and it seemed the level of force he needed to exert just to stand was immense. Atlas looked at him once more with that knowing stare and it was clear to Frank that he'd felt just the same in this condition with only more time to learn how to adjust to it. But it was a fleeting glance and a second later the imposter had started to move. Deliberately carrying their body away from that machine although Fontaine tried to scream in protest. Finding it more and more difficult to make a sound.

"Soon the kid will be here and he'll kill us." Atlas informed him as he slowly descended from the machine. "Those girls will get to the surface and Rapture will be entirely forgotten by them. It's saddening to know there are others down here still sane enough to try and escape, but at least the people we've wronged will make it back to the surface."

Again he tried to speak, to curse at Atlas or to beg frenziedly for his body back it was unclear but still his words failed him. Atlas easily filled in the empty air. "For a moment there Fontaine I really thought I might have misjudged you. But I was right in my first assessment. Perhaps the only good parts of you in those moments you showed humanity to family were all me. Without them you're barely human. What are you now Frank?"

Atlas stopped at his side for a moment and the man did not look up to see if it was a pitying look he cast the useless man now. "For a man such as yourself this ought to be a rather painful experience." He remarked calmly. "Doing the right thing."

With that the fake in his skin walked forward towards the elevator. Preparing to meet what would be their death wearing the face of a kid who'd known them all his life and somehow not known either of them truly. Knowing Atlas, as he was now, the man likely planned to greet the kid with a smile as he accepted their death and fulfilled that promise he'd somehow come to hold so dear to him.

Then the elevator was moving, both he and Atlas heard it and while Frank's reaction was a stone cold dread coiling in his stomach, Atlas's was to smile tiredly and reach for the radio and speak with Fontaine's voice as though it were his since birth. The irony of this was lost on Frank in that moment.

"I remember when me and the Kraut put you in that sub." He recalled, perfectly capturing Fontaine's scorn in his tone but the words were alarmingly nostalgic in a way that Frank just could not ignore.

"You were… no more than two." Atlas mused, wearing a smile that the kid would likely never see as he filed through Frank's own memories as though they were his own.

Perhaps they were in a way.

Then with his gaze turned to the ceiling where he could pretend to see the sun for a moment Atlas continued the charade a little longer. "You were my ace in the hole, but you were also the closest thing I ever had to a son."

Atlas cringed and Frank swore he could hear Patrick's name floating across his mind. Two sons he'd never really had but loved dearly all the same. Then he reconciled with the things he could not, never had and would never have in a matter of seconds, his pained gaze becoming a bitter sweet smile.

As if to say _this is enough, I am contented with this and I could not be prouder of you still_.

But what he spoke in its place was a kind lie rather than a unkind truth.

"And that's why this hurts." With those words gaze slipping back over to Frank who sat, silent and staring in his horror at the man who was marking their own great. "Betrayal, kid."

Atlas spoke into the radio but Frank knew his focus was not the kid on the other end.

"Life ain't strictly business."

The radio went dead and the elevator arrived mere moments later. Fontaine always knew he was mortal but never thought he'd see his own death play out in front of his eyes. Atlas turned towards the elevator, hands on his hips looking every bit the old revolutionary mutt he'd been crafted as for those few seconds between this moment and their punishment.

What Fontaine saw when that door opened was a bright blue spark and nothing else.


End file.
